From automation to autonomy

Written By wojtek szumowski

There is a difference between a system that automates and a system that attends.

A system that automates performs tasks faster. Fewer clicks, less friction, the same thing accomplished more efficiently. This is valuable.

It is not transformative.

A system that attends is present to the full situation — not only the task, but the context around the task. The person's state. The time of day. The pattern of the last hour. What is happening just outside the frame of the request, that could be meaningful.

We are at the beginning of this transition. Most AI systems are still organized as very capable automation — better search, faster execution, lower friction. The model is still: you ask, it responds.

Autonomy is different. Not autonomous in the sense of acting without instruction, but autonomous in the sense of having genuine presence — of being in the situation rather than waiting outside it.

This is what I am most interested in designing toward. Not the automation of tasks we were already doing. The design of a new kind of presence — one that is worth having, not just useful to have.

Human life is more than tasks. The technology we live with should know this.

wojtek szumowski

I am an inventor and experience designer who sees the connected world as a place full of potential for surprise, imagination, and possibility for new relations, where people & technology together unlock the experiential potential of every moment.

My energy draws from a life perspective of a poet and sociologist, moving across different cultures and fields of human experience. Applying social imagination and poetic perceptiveness, making connections, composing relations, revealing emotions, meaning and the why.
As a poet and experience designer I am interested in tender investigation of curious, emergent forms of our relationship with technology and each other.

https://www.hello-wojtek.com
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